An Illinois woman was evicted after she called the police multiple times to report a string of violent activity near her home.
Diamond Jones is suing the Village of Richton Park, a predominately Black southern suburb of Chicago, after she was kicked out for violating the controversial crime-free housing ordinance — which puts the village in a position to require the landlord to evict a tenant for “causing an unreasonably high numbers of calls” to the police or other alleged criminal-related activity.
A housing expert told the Chicago Sun-Times that the law targets non-white renters and shouldn’t be used to drive them out their communities.
Jones’ lawsuit was filed earlier this month to remedy “the harm that she suffered as a direct result of the Village’s actions and to ensure that Richton Park’s Crime-Free Housing Ordinance is declared unconstitutional,” the document stated. It claims that her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated as a result of this matter.
Things shifted in June 2022 when a shooting occurred in the village down the street of Jones’ residence, per a news release from the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee For Civil Rights.
Jones was at work while her mother was watching her kids. It led the family to call the local police department; however, doing so opened them up to a wave of threats online. Because of this, they contacted law enforcement for a second time.
The violence against them escalated two days later when a perp opened fire at her home.
Her mother “heard gunshots and glass breaking and fell to the floor until the incident was over. Once the shooting stopped, she was able to check whether the children were harmed,” the lawsuit said. “The shooting caused damage throughout Ms. Jones’s home, with bullet holes and fragments spraying multiple rooms, including the girls’ bedroom.”
They reached out to police again, and following the attack, a patrol car was stationed outside of the home. Jones, who moved into the rental property in 2018, was notified that she violated the CFO and was given a ten-day eviction notice. The note was placed on her door, and according to the lawsuit, it was the first time she heard about the law. The Chicago Lawyers’ Committee For Civil Rights argued that CFOs cause renters like Jones to be more reluctant to report crimes to avoid getting evicted.
“I reached out to those who were supposed to protect me and my family, but they let us down. I was ultimately evicted from the home we had lived in for four years as a consequence of these events, I sincerely hope that no one else has to go through what I did. I feel like I lost everything,” Jones said in the press release.
